#31 Breast Cancer Prevention Naturally with Dr. V

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists, and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

I'm excited to introduce you today to Dr. V. She is a chiropractor who practiced for over 30 years and then transitioned to helping women heal from breast cancer using natural approaches. So thank you so much for being with me here today, Dr. V. Thank you, Dr. Danya.

I'm excited. Thanks for sharing my message of hope.

You're welcome. Oh, my gosh. It's such an important time to be sharing this message. And so I'm so glad that you're joining, joining us. Tell us a little more. First, what inspired you to do what you do?

Well, honestly, I never thought I'd be doing what I was, what I'm doing. I had sold my practice after 30 years of practicing, and I, you know, just really didn't know what phase two was going to be. And I just started sharing my healing journey, my first healing journey in 2004, and one thing led to another, and now my team and I have coached women in 56 countries, and.

We'Ve really made a small little dent in the breast cancer world, but feel that we've helped a lot of women around the world.

Wow. It's just outstanding. I mean, what do you find when women come to you? What phase are they in? What's going on for them when they reach out to you?

Usually they're in panic mode. You know, some of them have either been just recently diagnosed or, you know, they're, They've done traditional medicine and it's not working for them. So they're trying to get another approach or, you know, they're. They're usually pretty much in panic mode. And Ginger, who's our support person, she. We say she talks women off the ledge, you know, because it's just. They're just so panicking because conventional medicine makes them feel like they're going to die tomorrow if they don't do all these things. And it's like, hold on, wait a minute. I just got diagnosed. I need to let this sink in. I need to figure out what I want to do, whether I want to do traditional, natural, incorporate the two. So I need time and that's what we tell women. It's not like you're dying of a heart attack, right? You have the time to do your research and to really be comfortable, be still, let that diagnosis sink in and understand that, you know, you. It's a turning point, right? When you get a diagnosis, it's a turning point, and you get to decide which way you want your. Your life to go.

Well. And I think you had an experience of breast cancer yourself, right? So did you learn that through your own experience?

Well, it really started way before that. 1983, my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he was given six weeks to live, told he was going to be dead in six weeks. And he bought into it and was dead to the day. You know how we hear that all the time, right? And it really showed me how little conventional medicine had to offer people with cancer. And as a chiropractor, I was a newbie. I was only in practice three years. I said, I know the body has an amazing ability to heal, and I know there's a lot of things that can be done with sick people. So 1983, no Internet. Imagine that, life without Internet.

I know, how do we do anything then?

Right? Went to the library, found some books, called a few hospitals, cancer hospitals, which were few and far between back then, and, you know, realized, wow, there were things that could have been done for my dad, but it was. It was too late. So I said, you know what? I'm going to apply those principles. I'm going to start teaching my patients these things in my practice and started seeing amazing results. I mean, I'm sure you see them in your practice too, Right. Mississippi rheumatoid cancer, you know, you name it, all kinds of illnesses can be reversed if you get. Give the body the tools that it needs and you make the necessary lifestyle changes. So I saw that. And then fast forward 23 years later, I'm getting ready for work, I'm in the shower, and I typically did a breast exam because my mom had breast cancer, and bam. Felt that lump on my left breast that changed the course of my life, professionally and personally, forever.

Wow. Wow. And it's. I mean, what happened then? I mean, did you immediately think, oh, this I'm going to look at this as a turning point or what? At first, did you go through sort of the shock and despair or.

Oh, absolutely, yeah. Like, it was. It was stunning for me because I was Dr. V. I was the wellness warrior, right? I was helping all these people. It's like, how could I be Sick. I thought I was doing everything right. But then when I really. When I stepped back and I know, and I understood that cancer was just a symptom, it's not the cause, then I had to understand, okay, what am I doing? What is happening in my life that allowed the cancer to show up. So I had to really slow things down. And there were moments when I was overwhelmed and confused and frustrated and jumping all over the place. And I said, you know what, if I feel this way, how much more so would the average person who's going through a healing journey? So I said, I've got to create a system for myself that'll work for me, that'll be easier. So then I started thinking, okay, what are the areas that I'm working on? Food, detoxification, hormones, energy, all those things, emotions. And I just started outlining them. And then I created the system, the seven essential system. Step by step guide.

You never have to fear cancer or any disease.

Wow.

First of all, that's quite a statement in itself because I think people often feel like cancer is this scary thing that's going to take control of their lives or end their lives, and they feel like they don't have anything they can do necessarily. And you're saying, wait a minute, when we come back to the basics of taking care of ourselves in a really good way through food and like you were mentioning, staying away from toxins or detoxifying and helping to rebalance hormones and processing emotions, that this could actually basically shift our bodies in a way that, that shifts the cancer. Right. To make it so the body's not in a cancer creating mode, it's now in a healing mode.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not, you know, if you, once you understand what cancer is and what cancer is not, it really takes away the fear. It's not this big mysterious disease that takes over you and you have no control. You have a large measure of control. And I've seen that, you know, for many, many decades, how people turn their health around by changing their lifestyle and taking responsibility for their health.

Wow. I think that's a really amazing message. I mean, I see it all the time. You're right. With all different health issues and my patients who are also going through breast cancer. But I think hearing it from you and how you really implemented it for your own health, it's just really, I can see how that empowers a lot of women. I know you have your book where you write about your seven essentials. Right. Heal breast cancer naturally. And I have it here in my Bookcase too. I love it. I mean that seems like. Would you say is that a good person is recently diagnosed or maybe they have a family history of breast cancer and they're like feeling like I just want some hope and knowing where I can start. Is that what you would recommend?

That's a great, great starting point because it outlines each of the seven essentials. And it's not just if you're diagnosed, if you want to prevent breast cancer or if you want to help your mother, you know, sister, friend, go through the journey, you know, equip yourself with information because this has over 700 references in it from published studies. So it's not just woo woo, new age stuff, it's real. It's hardcore science. It's evidence based natural medicine.

Yeah, it's it, you know, and that's the thing is I know I like to do the same thing, is find the studies behind even simple things like what I would consider like stress reduction, you know, like being able to do say meditation or mindfulness or take deep breaths or you know, things that we think, oh, that's not going to make a difference, it's just a little thing. But actually it makes a huge difference to give our bodies a chance to.

Recover from stress and have that recovery time that we need. That's how I talk about it a lot. But I think that I see that in your seven essentials is that same like permission and encouragement to make time and prioritize care for yourself.

Absolutely, absolutely. Because I'd like to quote this study, it's very powerful. It was an 11 year study done on women with breast cancer and they found that if they learned to manage their stress and had community support, they had a 79% decreased risk of dying from any disease, 75% of decreased risk of dying from breast cancer, but 79 from any disease. It shows you how powerful just those two little things can be.

So what do you, if you could give us just a little snippet of like maybe if someone was just wanting to get a start, like what would you say to them? If, you know, if you said what if I said what can I do today? I'm going to read your book, I'm going to get started, but what could I do today to start in this path?

Calm your mind and calm your body. Because we know if we feel like we're being chased by saber toothed tiger, right. Our body is not going to heal. So every day you have to get into the relaxation response and that allows the calming part of the nerve system the parasympathetic system to turn on health promoting genes to support your immune system. Because if you're going like this inside, then each and every cell in your body is going like that and it's not going to have the ability to heal. So when you're, when you have that relaxation response, you make better decision, you feel better, your stress hormones are down. It's, you know, there's so much, so many studies now on just that little thing on how it affects our genes and our DNA. So that's so powerful, that's the best place to start.

And as you're saying that, I'm really thinking that one amazing thing about a diagnosis like this is that sometimes it's almost, sometimes we almost need, it has to get to that point for us to sort of look at ourselves and make those different choices, right? Because to some degree we kind of live our lives thinking we're invincible or we're all stressed, so what's the point? And I'm just going to get through this next day. But when we get a diagnosis, it's like this, wake up, like, okay, I need to do something different here.

Right? Is that what you, A lot of times you hear that from people like, okay, I've got, this is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm going to do things differently now.

Definitely it's a turning point, it's a tap on the shoulder. And I would have to say that that was the biggest takeaway for me because I went through a second healing journey nine years later. You know, I was then known as the breast cancer conqueror. That was 2015. And I mean, talk about shock, right? Here I am the face of breast cancer conqueror, helping women heal cancer. And here I am with another lump and going through another journey. That was very humbling, trust me. But you know, the big takeaway was that I had to.

To pull away. I stopped coaching one on one. I trained coaches so that they could do it. And I, you know, I worked less and I took more time for myself. And my motto was I refuse to be stressed going forward for the rest of my life. When I feel myself or my body getting stressed, I made a promise to myself that I would pull away, do some tapping, meditation, prayer, read a book, go for a walk, something just to, you know, calm my body down. Because I know me, I'm a type A, right nose to the grindstone my whole life. And that's something that I really chose to change because I knew it was a contributing factor, something a lot of.

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Wow.

That'S, it's really inspiring. I love that. And what a model you are. I mean you start to just really see, wow, this I have to do things differently and how our bodies respond to that to really know that the body's gonna respond to having less stress or no stress, getting enough sleep and eating healthy foods and so on. I wonder if you touch just on because also part of your essential system has to do with some of these deeper things, like maybe deeper emotional traumas or even like, I'm thinking of like other toxins that can happen in our body that are at a deeper level. We might be thinking, oh, that happened a long time ago, or I've had this root canal and dental issue for so long, it can't possibly be contributing. But I know that part of your system is to say, no, we need to look at those festering things that haven't been addressed because quite possibly they are contributing.

Absolutely. So essential number four is to heal the emotional wounds. And I really encourage the women in our community to look at the childhood wounds. You know, you think, you know, when I hear women say, oh, I had the perfect childhood and there's, you know, I don't have any, you know, family issues or whatever, that's a red flag, you know, because a lot of times they're just, you know, they're just not facing what, what their reality is. But regardless, you know, learn to, you know, nurture that little girl, get in touch with her, and you'd be surprised. Like for me, what came up was that I found out that I was sexually abused by convicted pedophile from the age of three to five. I had no clue. And did a lot of therapy. And that surfaced up. And, you know, the therapist says, because I couldn't believe it, I said, no, you know, my parents were alcoholics and all that, but I was never sexually abused. And she said, well, ask your family. And, I mean, when I. When I called and asked my mom, it was like dead silence, like. And then she said, how would you know? You were only three, four or five years old. And then my sisters all chimed in and said, yep, we all knew, but nobody ever said anything, you know, so it was only I was in my late 40s that I found out. So that answered a lot of questions for me as to the decisions that I made in relationship to, you know, men and family and that sort of thing. So it's very, very important to address those deep wounds, because until you learn to nurture yourself, forgive yourself, forgive others, it can be very difficult for your body to heal. Because our body runs on our subconscious mind. Right. 95% of our thoughts are subconscious. So that's very key. And then you mentioned the dental. That's number five, is to embrace biological dentistry. Because, yes, if you have a root canal, that's basically a dead organ in your body, it's like a dead gallbladder, dead appendix, it's giving off toxins because there's a lot of bacterial overgrowth there. And if it's sitting on a tooth that affects that breast meridian, it's going to affect that energy flow to the breast. So definitely correlation there.

I just. I feel like I've got goosebumps because you're so clearly connecting these dots. And I'm sure there's people listening that are thinking, oh, my gosh, there's this or that thing that I know is kind of in the background that I just haven't. I just was trying to forget about or have forgotten about, like, in your case. And I just didn't know that I needed to address it or didn't know how to address it. And you're really saying, no, don't give up on yourself or your body, ways to address these things so that it doesn't have to leave you vulnerable to cancer or other health issues. Which is. Right, yeah.

And assemble a team of people.

Therapists, coaches, naturopath doctors, massage therapists, reflexologists, acupuncturists. Just assemble a team that's going to support you in your healing, because that's what it takes. And, you know, find community, because, as I mentioned, community and reducing your stress really gives you a huge advantage in healing. And, you know, that was a big motivating factor for me because a lot of women would come to us and they said, you know, I feel like the Lone Ranger, you know, are there other women that are doing this? And so that's when we started connecting women and created community and live events and, you know, coaching, group coaching, so that they could connect with each other and see that they could get support from other women.

Oh, that's. That's beautiful. I mean, it really is. And I'm going to make sure to put links with this podcast so that. So that women and people can find out more about all the different programs you offer. I know that it also has. This work has also inspired you to create your. The Breast Pal to help women with identifying abnormal. Because in your case, you found these lumps yourself. And of course, you're a trained chiropractor, so you're really good at feeling and noticing when something different is present. But I bet a lot of women feel like, I don't know what I'm supposed to feel. Why even do the exam? I'm probably not going to find anything. I have to say, though, that my patients who have ended up finding out they had breast cancer, most all of them found the tumor themselves.

And then went into the doctor's office. So tell us more. I just love that you created a tool to help women feel more confident with identifying abnormal growths in their breast tissue.

Yep. Essential number seven is to adopt very early detection. And this is the pink month. Right. And so we know that they're trolling for business with mammograms. You know, mammography. I'm not telling you not to have a mammogram or not. However, consider the fact that it's compression and radiation in tissue that's very sensitive. And the studies have shown us that repeated ionizing radiation can cause DNA damage and could lead to cancer. So regardless if you choose to do a mammogram, make sure you back it up with an ultrasound. Don't just rely on one thing. And then also look at thermography. Thermography is technology that looks at the infrared heat coming off your body, and it's going to track translated an image. And if there's heat or inflammation, that's a clue that something's happening. Because by the time they find something on a mammogram, it's been growing there for six to eight years.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, yes. Six to eight years before they can see it.

I know. And then with the thermogram, it can pick something up as small as one to two years, just a few hundred cells. So huge difference. But whatever kind of technology you use to do your screening, there are still 364 days of the year where your breast tissue can change. Right. So why not? You've got very sensitive pads of your fingers. Why not train your fingers? And this is where my breast friend comes in. So my breast friend was created while the silicone model was created by the Mammicare Foundation. And this is the model that doctors use to train on to find lumps, to train them to find, you know, lumps in women's breasts.

Like in medical school?

Yeah, yeah, when they go to medical school. Yeah. And so the Mammicare foundation and the manufacturer of the model asked me to take it to the general market. We made it look pretty, you know, because theirs is beige and ugly, but, you know, to take it to the market so women would have access to train on this model. Because how do you know what a lump feels like? Because women say all the time, my breasts are lumpy. I have dense breasts. I have cysts. How do I know what's what? Well, these lumps in the model are replicas of tumors that were removed from women's breasts. So when you learn what a lump feels like, then you can say, oh, that's what it feels like. It's very different than my breast tissue. And then when you know how to feel, because you don't poke in there with your fingertips, you have to use the pads of your fingers and do gentle little circles and go very deep because you'll notice this one, the red one, right, all the way down to the chest wall. So you have to apply a lot of pressure and get through that tissue. And then where to feel? Right. Most of them will just do their breasts, but you've got to go up into the collarbone, the armpit side, underneath the chest bone, because there's breast tissue in all those areas. So it's a whole training system that comes with a video and a little booklet. And it really empowers you, because the average size lump that a woman finds when she's not trained in a proper exam is the size of a ping pong ball. When she's trained, she can find something as small as a little pea. And when it's that small and it hasn't spread, the life expectancy is 88% over 15 years. So size matters when it comes to breast cancer.

Wow. I mean, just. Yeah, just think you could catch it before it grows, before it spreads, you know, much and before you would even catch it on a mammogram, like, you know, you can catch like as soon as possible. So then you can get in and you know, have it addressed, whether that's to have it removed or to start treating it before it, before it gets worse, which is. Yeah, that's, that's makes such a big deal. And I don't think, I mean, here we've had that. Those kind of models and tools. I use that too when I was in naturopathic medical school. But it wasn't. Can you imagine, it wasn't available to the public. You know, but really it's women who can, who are taking a shower most days or you know, could eat, you know, living in their bodies every day, every day and could be paying attention if they, if they know. So I definitely encourage everybody to get the best friend and you know, and teach your daughters too. Right. So if you. So that like and your friends so that, you know, this is one of your probably a best gift of protecting your loved ones from, you know, from breast cancer. You know, getting advanced before, you know, you could have picked up on it earlier. Wow. Oh my gosh. It's just. Congratulations. I mean, I'm just so. I mean, how awesome. Everything you're doing to really help other people to learn and to take care of themselves and to conquer breast cancer. No wonder you're called the breast cancer conqueror.

Well, thank you. Yeah, it's been definitely a labor of love. Lots of, lots of heart and soul in our work for sure.

Wow. Well, is there anything else you'd like to share while we're here today?

Well, just, you know, when I created the seven essentials, what I really appreciated about it and what a lot of women have told me since is that it gives you that step by step process. So it takes a lot of the confusion and the overwhelm. So, you know, number one is looking at your food. You know, let food be your medicine. And is there cookie cutter diet for cancer? No, because we're all individuals and we all know that a person may thrive with a paleo diet, another person may thrive on a vegetarian diet. You really have to test and assess and see what works best for you. Number two is to reduce your toxic exposure. We live in a toxic world. We can't live in a bubble. But there's so many things that we can do to reduce that by looking at what we put on our skin, what we have in our homes, you know, doing things to detox our bodies, coffee enemas, lymphatic Drainage, dry skin, brushing, rebounding, all those things. Right? So, so important number three is to balance your energy, balancing your hormones, your sleep, your exercise, all of that. Four, we talked about emotional wounds. Five, dental. Six is all the therapeutic plants and herbs that can support your health. And seven is early detection, which we talked about.

Oh, I love it. I mean, I like you're making this important point, which is that it's individualized, you know, and that it could look what? Your seven essentials can look slightly different as you're implementing it than the next person. That not all breast cancer or the causes of breast cancer is the same for everyone, you know, because I know a lot of times, you know, women think, well, why did this happen? Why me? Even with a genetic background still, you know, it's like, why now? Why me? And these. I can see where these seven steps also help answer that question. Oh, maybe there was an aspect that was diet, or maybe there's an aspect that's toxins. It's not just one thing, and it's unique to each person. So you want to be able to. I love how you said you have these seven essentials to guide you so you don't feel like you have to be going and researching it all on your own and starting from scratch and recreating the wheel, so to speak, when you already said, hey, start with these seven areas because likely you're going to be able to identify what made you vulnerable to this, to breast cancer and also help you to change that, you know, to reverse it so that you're not no longer susceptible to cancer cells. Right.

Totally. Totally. Yeah.

I love it. All right, well, thank you again so much for sharing and for everything you've created and everything you do each day. It's really wonderful. Amazing gift to women around the world. And so if I could just say how grateful we all are to you.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. All right, well, thanks for being here, and I look forward to talking to you again more soon.

Thanks. Donnie. Good to see you again.

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